Perforated pegboard with detachably mounted supporting means for displaying articles in shops or storing tools in various out-of-the-way places are well known in the art. Traditionally, the pegboards have circular apertures and the supporting means are formed from a rod having a circular cross-section with inner ends shaped and spaced to simultaneously engage two or more apertures in the pegboard. In an effort to improve the stability of articles mounted on a pegboard and to enable the article supporting means to be mounted in both horizontal and vertical orientations, pegboards having cruciform apertures and article supporting means with T-shaped clips have been developed.
Such a device may be seen in United Kingdom Patent Application No. GB 026 850A granted to Schucom B. V., which discloses a system for detachably fastening articles to a pegboard perforated by cruciform openings. In this system the articles are held in article holders with T-shaped clips which attach the article holders to the pegboard. Because the distance between the articles themselves and the pegboard wall is considerable, this system is inconvenient for supporting heavy tools. The article holders do not accommodate pegboard walls having a range of thicknesses.
A pegboard with cruciform holes also is disclosed in Australian Patent No. 271447, granted to RICHARDSON & SONS LTD. Here, article holders mounted on vertical plates are attached to a pegboard by passing parallel lugs at the edge of the plates through selected slots of the pegboard. Again, the articles themselves are supported at a considerable distance from the pegboard. The article holders must remain in a vertical orientation and they do not accommodate pegboard walls having a range of thicknesses.
A retention clip for a tablecloth may be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 4,158,905 to O'Leary. This clip is U-shaped and serves to overlie the top and bottom surfaces of a table. However, the clip does not have a leg which may be passed through an opening to engage a pair of walls which partially define the opening and it is not attached to an article holding bracket.
The prior art inventions use rigid constructions for the article holder or supporting means and the pegboard. Therefore, the openings in the pegboard must be sized such that the supporting means may be mounted and detached easily. Also, they must be sized to accommodate manufacturing variances which may occur in the pegboard and in the supporting means. Thickness variations in the pegboard also occur due to wear that occurs at a pegboard aperture due to repeated insertion and removal of an attaching means. This ultimately may result in a rather loose attachment of the supporting means to the pegboard such that when the pegboard is shaken or jolted, the supporting means become dislodged from the pegboard. The cited prior art inventions do not address the problem of tightly securing an article supporting means to pegboards having a range of thicknesses due to wear or manufacturing tolerances.